Fun with Bash on Ubuntu on Windows

Ever since the Windows Subsystem for Linux/Bash on Ubuntu on Windows feature in Windows 10 I have been playing around with it. Canonical, the makers of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, and Microsoft, made the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) together, and it enables bash, which is the de facto default CLI shell on Linux, to run on Windows as a first class citizen. You no longer need things like Cygwin to run bash and its command language and tools on your Windows 10 computer.Recently I did a little customizing to get a more genuine Ubuntu feeling on my Windows box. Specifically I wanted to make my Windows-based bash window look as much as the real thing as possible.

Windows has its own fonts for console windows, like Command Prompt (Consolas) and PowerShell (Lucida Console). But Ubuntu uses the Ubuntu Mono font for its console windows. Luckily for us the Ubuntu Font Family, of which Ubuntu Mono is a member, is freely available to anyone, in easy to install TTF format. To use it for your bash windows, download the package from the Ubuntu font site, extract its content and right-click each font file (.ttf) you want to install.

Now, open your bash shell and edit its properties. In the Font list, select the newly installed Ubuntu Mono font:

Granted, it’s not a huge difference between the default font and Ubuntu Mono, but the devil is in the details 🙂